Documents / FOIA release
This is a 1992 CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, originally classified Secret NOFORN and approved for release in 2013. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974 and the two aircraft it developed, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. The history covers the U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers and later operations in Asia and Latin America. It also includes a section on U-2s, UFOs and Operation BLUE BOOK.
“Edwards Air Force Base”7 pages
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Staff Nathan Twining each gave different figures for the number of deployed Soviet missiles. Although the CIA figures were based on evidence gained from overflights, Dulles could not reveal this fact to the Senate and, therefore, faced very sharp questioning. $ ^{14} $
As a result of these Senate hearings, Dulles was determined to obtain permission for more overflights in order to settle the missile-gap question once and for all and end the debate within the intelligence community. To accomplish this, Dulles proposed photographing the most likely areas for the deployment of Soviet missiles. At this time there was still no evidence of SS-6 ICBM deployment outside the Tyuratam missile test range. Because the SS-6 was extremely large and liquid fueled, analysts believed these missiles could only be deployed near railroads. Existing U-2 photography showed railroad tracks going right to the launching pad at the test site. Dulles, therefore argued that SS-6 installations could easily be located by flying along railroad lines. Dulles was supported by members of the
Saratov Engels Airfield, 6 December 1959 Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.